Natalia shivers, rubbing her arms. Her crimson dress is damp at the shoulders. Her dark hair is windswept, framing her face in wild, beautiful disarray. She looks out of place in the dark, tactical interior of my vehicle.
I turn the heat up, angling the vents toward her.
"Thank you." She murmurs, her teeth chattering.
"Don't thank me." I put the SUV in drive, pulling away from the curb. The tires grip the slick pavement. "We have a lot of work to do. Tomorrow, we start rehearsing the cover story. You need to know my history. My preferences. My daily routines."
"And you need to know mine." She points out, leaning her head against the headrest, watching me in the glow of the dashboard lights.
"I already know yours." I state calmly, navigating the dark streets.
She frowns, her brow furrowing. "Excuse me?"
"You drink your coffee black because you do not have time to wait for the barista to steam the milk." I list the facts effortlessly, pulling them from the dossier I memorized days ago. "You run three miles every morning at five-thirty, regardless of the weather. You despise corporate networking events but you attend them anyway because you are fiercely ambitious. You have not spoken to your father in four years. You are allergic to penicillin. And you sleep on the left side of the bed."
Natalia stares at me, genuine shock radiating from her wide eyes. The cynical armor is gone, replaced by a raw, exposed vulnerability.
"You investigated me." Her voice is a whisper.
"I investigate everyone." I stop at a red light, turning my head to look at her. The shadows of the rain streaking across thewindshield play over her face. "I do not introduce unknowns into my life, Natalia. I know everything about you."
"You do not know everything." she snaps back, a defensive fire igniting in her eyes. She hates feeling exposed. She hates being analyzed.
"No?" I let my gaze drop to the flush rising on her cheeks.
"No." She crosses her arms again. "A dossier can’t tell you everything. It tells you facts. It doesn’t tell you the truth."
She is right. The dossier told me her measurements, but it did not tell me how her body would fit against mine. The dossier told me her favorite perfume, but it did not prepare me for the devastation of mint and sweet basil wrapping around my senses. The dossier told me she was impulsive, but it did not calculate the way her defiance would make me want to conquer her.
The light turns green. I press the accelerator, the powerful engine surging forward.
"Then you will have to teach me." I keep my eyes on the road. "Because starting tomorrow, you are moving into the Costa compound."
"What?" Natalia bolts upright in her seat. "Absolutely not. I have an apartment. I have a life."
"You have a life that is currently unprotected." I cut her off, my tone leaving no room for argument. "Rourke is not a fool. He will verify our relationship. He will have men watch you. If you are sleeping alone in a West Loop high-rise while I am ten miles away at the compound, the cover is blown. You sleep where I sleep."
"I am not moving into a mafia fortress!" she yells over the sound of the heater. "We agreed to a public performance. Not a hostage situation."
"It is not a negotiation." My grip on the steering wheel tightens. The leather groans under the pressure. "You wear my ring. You sleep under my roof. The compound is secured.Twenty-four-hour surveillance. Stone walls. Iron gates. You will be safe."
"Safe from the Bellantis." She glares at my profile. "What about safe from you?"
The question hits me dead center. A direct strike to my chest. I glance at her. The fierce, beautiful challenge in her eyes. The way her chest heaves with indignant breaths.
I am a man who built his entire existence on control. I analyze the risk. I neutralize the threat. I protect the family. But looking at her, trapped in the passenger seat of my car, radiating warmth and chaos and defiance, I know the truth.
She is not safe from me.
She is the furthest thing from safe. My protective instincts have warped into something I cannot name. I do not just want to keep her alive. I want to keep her. I want to strip away the cynical litigation associate and uncover the woman underneath. I want to break down her defensive walls with the same brutal efficiency I use to dismantle rival crime syndicates.
“You're safe from the world, Natalia,” I say quietly, my voice barely audible over the hum of the tires on wet asphalt.
She catches the evasion. Her brilliant mind processes the omission instantly. She swallows hard, turning her face toward the passenger window. She watches the rain-soaked city blur past us, the neon lights bleeding into the darkness.
The silence sits between us, dense with everything we are refusing to name.
I turn the SUV north, heading toward the compound. Toward the stone walls and the reinforced steel doors. Toward the war room in the basement where I will spend the rest of the night tracking Jeff and Rourke through a maze of encrypted ledgers.
